“Are you listening?” asks London’s Barbican Centre, as it launches a sweeping multi-sensory exhibition centred around sound. Feel the Sound promises to transform the way we think about audio, exploring how listening – in its many forms – “shapes emotions, memories and even physical sensations.” It’s an expansive show that utilises many corners of the Barbican, from its entrance to public foyers to underground car parks. There are 11 interactive installations to discover in total, including four all-new commissions. This is an invitation to pause, tune in and experience the world not just through hearing, but through feeling.
This exhibition is a journey – not only conceptually, but physically, as it navigates many architectural spaces across the Barbican. Miyu Hosoi’s Observatory Station greets visitors at the Silk Street entrance; the project mixes archival field recordings from around the world with sounds from across the Centre, inviting listeners to imagine the daily life of a stranger. Elsewhere, Temporary Pleasure’s Joyride becomes the first ever artwork to spill out of the Barbican into its car park. It comprises four salvaged car wrecks and echoes the spirit of the Y2K era: boy racers, rave, modified sound systems and DIY music.
Your Inner Symphony, meanwhile, spans multiple spaces, capturing visitors’ physiological reactions to Feel the Sound – including heart rate fluctuations – transforming real-time data into a visual and sonic display. It is designed and created by Nexus Studios and Kinda Studios – the first women-led neuroscience lab dedicated to the impact of art, culture and technology through science. Audience participation is key to many of the pieces exhibited across The Curve gallery; visitors are invited to take part in UN/BOUND by TRANS VOICES, ILĀ and MONOM, a collective choral experience, and to visit the two Listening Playgrounds, where it is possible to engage with vibrations and frequencies – including Sensing Streams, by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto – “not just with their ears, but with their whole body.”
In an exhibition so heavily rooted in the experience of hearing, poet and author Raymond Antrobus provides an essential contribution with Heightened Lyric. He has “high frequency deafness”, meaning he doesn’t hear any sound between 3000-8000 hertz. His piece, displayed outside on the Lakeside Terrace, addresses the gaps between the hearing and non-hearing world. It presents seven kites that carry British Sign Language interpretations of poems that explore sound and its absence. “The kites represent the experience of sound that I will miss throughout the Feel the Sound exhibition,” Antrobus explains. “They speak to any non-abled body about what is possible in spaces beyond our physical capability.”
There is so much to explore in Feel the Sound. Remarkably, this exhibition is just one part of Barbican’s wider summer programme, Frequencies: The Sounds That Shape Us, which is packed with film screenings, concerts, events, workshops and talks – including the world premiere of a new version of Darren Emerson’s award-winning VR experience, In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats. Feel the Sound is another example of Barbican’s ambitious and wide-reaching programming, that so often taps into the key conversations of our times. Luke Kemp, Head of Creative Programme, says: “Feel the Sound joins our roster of experiential exhibitions launched at the Barbican before touring the world. Previously we’ve focused on AI (AI, More Than Human), the climate emergency (Our Time on Earth), and this time, the rhythm of the planet and our bodies.” Following the London premiere, the show will tour internationally, including to MoN in Tokyo.
Feel the Sound is at Barbican Centre, London until 31 August.
Image Credits:
1. Kinda Studios and Nexus Studios, Your Inner Symphony, 2025. Concept image courtesy of the artists.
2. Temporary Pleasure, Joyride, 2025. Concept image courtesy of the artist.
3. Kinda Studios and Nexus Studios, Your Inner Symphony, 2025. Concept image courtesy of the artists.
